Daily Cup of Tech

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With just a few hours left to get in on the BlackBerry contest, now is your chance! A quick donation secures your opportunity to win a BlackBerry! I will be making the draw and announcing the winner of the BlackBerry later in July.

I would like to thank everyone who has donated this week! It never ceases to amaze me how generous the DCoT faithful are. I am truly humbled. A big thanks to:

• Chris W.
• Thomas C.
• John W.
• James W.
• Pamela L.
• Karen B.
• Michael C.
• Dave F.
• Mark D.

I’ve added you all in for the draw for the BlackBerry. Good Luck!

I also want to thank AlwaysWebHosting for continuing to provide excellent hosting for Daily Cup of Tech. I was expecting to get service a bit better than my previous web host but not this good! I am truly impressed!

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Welcome to MapServer — UMN MapServer:

MapServer is an Open Source development environment for building spatially-enabled internet applications. MapServer is not a full-featured GIS system, nor does it aspire to be. Instead, MapServer excels at rendering spatial data (maps, images, and vector data) for the web. Beyond browsing GIS data, MapServer allows you create “geographic image maps”, that is, maps that can direct users to content. For example, the Minnesota DNR Recreation Compass provides users with more than 10,000 web pages, reports and maps via a single application. The same application serves as a “map engine” for other portions of the site, providing spatial context where needed.

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So when our Windows 2000 domain controller at the main office suddenly up and died, we needed to move the FSMO roles to a new server. Typically, this is done by demoting the server with the FSMO roles and the roles will roll over to another server. When this is not possible, as it was in this case, you are then instructed to seize these roles. But, what you are not told about is the disastrous effects of the leftover remnants of the dead domain controller. So, I went looking.

It turns out that there are several things that you need to do in order to clean out your network of the DC ghosts. These include:

• Removing metadata
• Removing server object from the sites
• Removing server object from domain controllers container
• Remove server object from DNS

Read the rest of the story…

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We are pretty much entirely a Windows shop where we work. And, of course, most of our tools are Windows based. But, when we wanted to get data from our dead servers, we turned to trusty Linux for a hand.

Specifically, what we wanted to do was get data off the dead server without having to make any changes to the server hard drives. This meant that we could not reinstall or change any of the original configurations.

So, the logical choice was to use a bootable CD as it is the quickest solution to the problem. I was ready to fire up either a customized version of BartPE or Ultimate Boot CD for Windows but my summer student, Jeff, thought that a Linux distribution was a good option.

Since Jeff was going to be performing the procedure, I decided that I would let him use what he was most comfortable with. So, Jeff ran to the local computer store, picked up a large USB drive, and prepared to migrate some data.

Jeff decided that he would use KNOPPIX and this was no surprise to me or anyone else who is familiar with this distribution. From their website:

KNOPPIX is a bootable Live system on CD or DVD, consisting of a representative collection of GNU/Linux software, automatic hardware detection, and support for many graphics cards, sound cards, SCSI and USB devices and other peripherals. KNOPPIX can be used as a productive Linux system for the desktop, educational CD, rescue system, or adapted and used as a platform for commercial software product demos. It is not necessary to install anything on a hard disk. Due to on-the-fly decompression, the CD can have up to 2 GB of executable software installed on it (over 8GB on the DVD “Maxi” edition).

This is really an amazing CD and one that every tech should have in their toolbox. Unfortunately, every OS has its limitations and one of the limitations that Jeff discovered is that KNOPPIX couldn’t read the USB drive. So, on to plan B.

Jeff next went to an Ubuntu LiveCD. Most people are familiar with the desktop version of this popular Linux distribution but many people are surprised to learn that the installation CD is also a LiveCD. So, you can boot from it and do almost everything that you could do from a fully installed version.

This allowed Jeff to get on the dead server, access the data on the drives, and migrate it off to the USB device so that it could be used later.

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It appears that Murphy and his laws were in full effect this week at work. First, I get sick with a nasty case of the flu. Everything that I ate was either return to sender or express exit. As I’m settling in to a day of self pity and TV reruns, the phone start to ring with the news of my second problem.

Apparently our domain controller for our main office crashed and the IT team could not get it to come back up and stay up. So, by 10 o’ clock, I was dragging my flu ridden butt out to the office. I ended up working until 2:AM the next day.

The third problem occurred at 11:AM on day 2. I got a phone call from the tech guy out at our field office telling me that their server did not come back up when they rebooted it. So they now found themselves in the exact same position as we did at the main office.

Things are starting to get sorted out now. We have new servers running in both locations and we are getting everything to start pointing away from the old servers and point to the new servers. We are still getting the occasional person telling us about something that is not working and we are dealing with these as they come up.

One thing that I like to do in situations like this is try and get something positive out of the situation. And there are definitely some good things that are coming out of this whole turn of events. One of those positives is the fact that I have learned a lot about recovering your environment and getting it running in short order.

Since I have gained about five years worth of experience in the past three days, I’m going to be sharing a number of these lessons with you over the next week or so. I hope that you can learn this stuff from me and not the hard way like I did.

So, the first lesson is Poop Happens!  We did everything right and by the book. We did proper backups. We plan for disasters to occur. We were prepared to act in the case of a server lose. And yet, we did not count on me being sick. We were not prepared to lose two servers in such a short period of time. There were a lot of details that we just could not foresee or if we did think of them in advance, we figured that the odds of them happening we so small, we did not worry about our actions in the event that they did occur.

What got us by were two key things: experience and flexibility. All of the combined experience that the team had allowed us to come up with solutions to our problems. The fact that one member in the team had tried a solution in a similar situation in the past helped to guide us to success.

Because the team was also flexible, able to think on their feet and come up with sometimes really unique solutions on the fly, was also significant to our success. Not only did the team think outside the box, they threw the box away! We did things that I though we would never do.

A big thanks goes out to Kent, Jeff, Mark, John, and Mamood for all of the help and effort that you put in over the past few days. You guys rock!

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Welcome to cmyOS:

cmyos.com offers a free online operating system/desktop for all users through itsopen source collaborative network: cmynetworks. Through the open source community, cmyos works to produce rich applications that are enhance the online experience of developers and browsers alike. View frequently asked questions here: FAQs.

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This little trick will save you a pile of typing and coding for your webpage or blog!

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MSFN Forums > Adprep success, DCPROMO fails:

to promote a 2003 R2 server to a domain controller you will need to run the R2 adprep adprep in the i386 directory of your 2003 R2 cd will not work, it needs to be the adprep from disc 2 in the D:\CMPNENTS\R2\ADPREP\ directory

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Just so everyone knows that I have not dropped off the face of the earth, I have run into a bit of trouble over the past couple of days and it may be a couple more before I get back to the blog.  We had our domain controller at work go belly up and we are in the process of replacing it.  This, of course, happened on the day that a got a really bad case of the flu!

Anyway, just to let everyone know that I’m still here, just a bit pre-occupied at the moment.

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Tip Jar $1.00 $3.00 $5.00 $10.00 $25.00 $50.00 $100.00 Show Your Appreciation

This is the last week that you will be able to get your name in for the BlackBerry draw! We had two more people get their names in for the BlackBerry this week. A special thanks to:

• Nicholas B.
• Michael B.

If you want to have your name in for the BlackBerry, simply make a donation to Daily Cup of Tech via the Tip Jar and you will receive one entry for every dollar that you donate.

You have until June 30^th, 2007 at midnight central time to make a donation. The winner will be announced on July 9^th.

I also want to thank AlwaysWebHosting for their continued support by providing me with hosting for Daily Cup of Tech. I have received a significant increase in speed and reliability for the website since I moved DCoT over. If you are looking for web hosting, definitely check out AlwaysWebHosting. (Make sure you go to AlwaysWebHosting through DCoT so that you are eligible for a discount on your hosting.)

Thanks again for your continued support to Daily Cup of Tech.  I would not be able to do this without your support and effort.

If you found this post useful, why don't you buy me a cup of coffee to show your gratitude?